Retaking Rapture
by The Wild West Pyro
Summary: A year after the events of Bioshock 2, Jack, Eleanor and Delta return to the crumbling utopia in order to try and restore the city. Meanwhile, Elizabeth flees from an insane and revenge-hungry Comstock. Based on an idea from me and my friend Dorminchu on deviantArt. WARNING: Long gaps between updates!
1. Chapter 1

Bioshock Fanfiction Collab-Chapter 1

_Just a few miles west of Reykjavik, there is an area known as the Frozen Triangle. Thousands of ships and planes have been lost in its waters over the years._

To the surface world, this area is still a constant hazard-an Apollo Air flight went down in 1960. There have been rumours of a mysterious dome under the sea, inhabited by people, and a phantom lighthouse, which causes any ships that come near it to sink, and any planes to crash into the sea.

What the people of the surface do not know is that the lighthouse is merely an entrance to an underwater city.

An underwater city, first dreamed up by the tycoon Andrew Ryan, in the art-deco style that defined the 1920s and 1930s. Where the great would not be bound by the small. Where the artist would not fear the censor. Where there was endless economic freedom and no rules. That city was Rapture, the shining city below the sea, where so many people had disappeared to after World War II.

But this utopia suffered a great tragedy. A civil war swept it, taking most of the population with it. Now, the city lies in ruins, a reminder of Andrew Ryan's dream.

**Welcome Center, Rapture, July 10th, 1969**

A man, a woman and a hulking creature in a diving suit sat on the dilapidated benches, cleaning blood off their boots.

The man's name was Jack Ryan - the son of the tycoon Andrew Ryan, who had disappeared in 1946. The woman's name was Eleanor Lamb, daughter of the famous British psychologist, Sofia Lamb. And the creature in the diving suit…well, no one was sure whether he was still a man or merely a metal golem now, but he was once Johnny Topside, Eleanor's father, a professional diver and secret agent for the CIA.

Jack was staring ahead, bitterly scraping the blood off with a cloth. Occasionally, electricity crackled across his hands.

It was Fontaine's fault they were in this mess, he thought.

Right now, he could have finished the jobs, cleaned up the city, then gone back up with his daughters and continued with his life.

He thought back to the events that had started this whole mess.

* * *

It was the afternoon, and Jack's daughters were all back from school.

The house looked the same as always-the books lined up neatly on their shelves, the frames of countless photographs shining in the late sun, the furniture gleaming and the schoolbags haphazardly stacked in a corner.

They were playing Monopoly together. Jack was watching.

"Mr. Ryan?!"

Jack turned around from his spot on the couch to hear the knock on the door.

"Mr. Ryan! Your mail!"

Jack opened the door and a lanky, tall, fast-talking postman handed him two boxes and a letter.

"Who sent these?"

"Two redheaded twins or something, in trench coats and fedoras. Real snazzy outfit. Scientists or something. Carryin' around a clipboard, askin' people to flip a coin. It always landed on heads or something. I don't know."

"Anyway, just open those two boxes and see what's in 'em-I gotta go and deliver the same thing to that crazy but cute neighbour of yours."

As the postman ran to the next house on the left, Jack brought the parcels into the house.

Immediately, his 5 "daughters"-all now ten to twelve at most-surrounded him.

"What is it, Daddy?"

"Are they for us?"

Jack opened the first one…and dropped it in horror.

Inside was a Plasmid bottle of Electro Bolt and an ADAM and EVE syringe.

_How…how did they know?__  
_  
Were the scientists from the FBI? He didn't know. He just hoped he wouldn't get sent to jail. It had been a long time since the underwater city had been built, and the government was still curious. Jack had also seen various books on display in the shops, all with their own unique and plausible theories about the city, but still far from the truth.

His daughters looked at the items nervously. Then one of them, Molly Babcock, about eleven years old, piped up.

"Daddy, are we going back?"

The rest of his daughters chimed in worriedly.

"I don't wanna go back!"

"They'll kill us!"

"What if Mr. Bubbles doesn't recognize me anymore?"

Jack turned around and took a deep breath. His daughters looked at him, expectation shining in their eyes.

"I…I don't know. But if we are going back…I'll have to go by myself."

His eldest daughter, Masha Lutz, started to say something, but she stopped at the look on her fellow Sisters' faces.

With trembling hands, Jack opened the second box.

Inside was an Anti-Aging tonic-one he'd kept on using, to continue looking 23 years old, despite the fact he was technically 13, Armour-piercing .45 Colt Pistol ammunition in speedloaders, and his Wrench.

Jack took it out. The weight and feel was familiar in his hand. It still crackled with Electro Bolt.

At the bottom of the box was a letter. He picked it up.

_"Dear Mr. Ryan:_

Please come to Rapture-we have resurrected Dr. Tenenbaum. She needs your help.

Sincerely,

Robert and Rosalind Lutece , of the CIA.

PS: Tell Eleanor to come along too. Meet us in Reykjavik."

_But Tenenbaum died a month ago. Porter told me.__  
_  
The Vita Chambers still worked? Perhaps that was the reason why Tenenbaum was still alive.

And if the Luteces _were_ from the CIA, how did they know how to get into Rapture in the first place?

Jack snapped out of his thoughts. He needed to see Eleanor. Now.

* * *

A few minutes later, he was at her dwelling. Eleanor was staring in shock at the boxes of Plasmids, and Tommy Gun ammunition, along with a doll of Delta.

"Did they know about this? And how did they get into Rapture in the first place?"

Jack swallowed nervously.

"What does Delta say?"

Eleanor closed her eyes, deep in thought.

"He says he didn't remember any other scientists working in Rapture at the time-only Suchong, Tenenbaum and Gil."

Jack let that sink in for a moment. But he soon brushed it aside.

"Eleanor, pack our stuff. Tell Mr. Jones I'm going on a holiday."

Eleanor stared at him. "But-"

"Don't worry. He's a good boss. He'll let me have a few weeks off anyway. If I don't come back, he'll have Mike take my place temporarily-he's just as much of an efficient worker as I am. And call Elaine. I'm going to need that cast of Bill's hand again."

"Papa?"

Jack turned to see Masha, clutching one of the Audio Diaries her parents had recorded.

"Can I go with you?"

"No, Masha. Stay here and look after your siblings."

"But Papa, I want to visit my parents…"

Jack turned and thought about her dead parents, Sam and Mariska Lutz, dead of a drug overdose in McDonagh's Tavern.

"Daddy?"

"Father?"

"Auntie Eleanor?"

Jack and Eleanor turned to see Jack's daughters, holding their neatly packed suitcases and backpacks, and wearing the scrappy, makeshift dresses that Eleanor had sized up to fit them.

"We're coming with you, Daddy!"

Jack sighed, then smiled and hugged his daughters, each of them squealing in joy. Eleanor picked up the two youngest ones, Lucy and Jane, now six years old, hoisted them on her shoulders, picked up her bag and walked out with Jack, who was carrying two suitcases and a shoulder bag, surrounded by his adopted daughters.

**The docks at Reykjavik, July 7th, 1969.**

"Let's see…SS Mary Jane, SS Boxer, and…aha! SS Columbia!"

The massive yacht stood at the docks proudly, her white sails billowing in the breeze. The brass rails shone in the sunlight.

It was a sunny day. Jack looked wistfully towards the beach, seeing the children playing. He would have liked to spend a few hours with his daughters, watching them splash around in the surf and building sandcastles, but they had to get to Rapture.

"Hello."

Jack and the rest turned around to see the ship's owners, Rosalind and Robert Lutece.

The two were very alike-both had flaming red hair, and wore the same outfit-a khaki trench coat and matching hat with a green waistcoat, only that Rosalind was wearing a dress. They almost looked like they were the same person, albeit in different genders.

"So…are you two the ones who sent us here?"

"Yes, Miss Lamb." replied Robert. "Now, if you would kindly get on the yacht, we have a journey ahead."

After a few hours, they had entered the bathysphere and reached Rapture.

"I chose…Rapture!"

But his father's words were interrupted by the children's reactions to the beautiful city.

"Whoa…"

"Daddy, it's beautiful!"

"Look, look! It's Mr. Bubbles!"

"MISTER B! HIII!" yelled Sally, his second eldest daughter, in joy.

Jack smiled, but inside, he was grim as he looked at the state of his father's creation. It was more decayed, more waterlogged, more devastated than ever-

* * *

"Jack!"

Jack snapped out of his thoughts at the sound of his father calling his name.

Andrew Ryan strode forward, golf club in hand. Although he should have been in his 70s, he looked like he was in his mid-30s. The Vita-Chambers that had revived him had, of all things, a control panel that could set your age to younger or older.

"Mark Meltzer has just radioed this in. Fontaine's office is unguarded."

Ryan had ordered Mark and Diane McClintock to act as scouts-he had been impressed by how Mark had made his way through Rapture armed with nothing but a pistol, while Diane had a lot of experience from fighting in the Rapture Civil War and knew how to take down various Big Daddies-handy for the ones that had been forcibly brainwashed and turned over to Fontaine's side.

"Now, I want you to get anything that might be valuable-audio diaries, documents, books-as information to us. Load your Shotgun with electric shot and go."

Jack entered through the doors of the Welcome Center and past the two Big Daddies guarding the Medical Pavilion, which had been captured but was still in need of splicer-eliminating.

The two Rosies had cleared away the groups of freshly killed Splicers and were casually leaning on their blood-encrusted Rivet Guns, listening to Molly and Polly Babcock yammering away on how they would take them back to the surface once their parents were alive again and the war was over.

"You'll love it, Mr. Bubbles! We can feed you spaghetti and watch movies with you and play games and I can take you to school for show and tell! Can we take Mr. B to the surface, Daddy?"

Jack nodded with a smile and reminded himself to tell Tenenbaum to find a way to make the Big Daddies human again.

The Big Daddies rose up, the Babcock twins still chatting away, and let Jack pass through into Neptune's Bounty.

**New York City, 1913**

"And may the Lord bless Elizabeth, wherever she may be. Amen."

Lady Alicia Dewitt, , formerly Lady Comstock, rose from her spot in the church and walked out.

It was a hard time for both her and Booker. Ever since her husband had received the news that his other daughter and companion through Columbia was dead, he had refused to work on any new cases or help the Vox, who were now considerably less brutal and were waging a war against Fink, who, thanks to his immense wealth, had not only become as powerful as the government, but had assembled a private army to overthrow Theodore Roosevelt and with enough munitions to outgun the US Army.

Her husband was already a fractured man, with self-loathing, guilt, soldier's heart, gambling and drinking issues and anger management. Slate had solved the soldier's heart problem for Booker, while Anna had cheered up Booker immensely. She herself had solved the rest of the problems, with the church, heart to heart talks and intimate healing.

As she walked past a shop selling thimbles, she thought of Elizabeth's frequent visits to Booker and Anna between her Comstock-eliminating. She had grown very fond of the girl, and treated her like a true daughter. Slate and even Daisy, who were both normally fighting Fink's mercenaries a block away, had taken time to teach Elizabeth how to fight. And of course Anna had missed Elizabeth, for she did not have someone to play games with. Even the neighbours missed her, as she was kind to everyone she met.

The door opened and she took the elevator up to the fourth floor. The front door wasn't locked. She opened it gently to be greeted by the sight of Booker slumped on his desk, sobbing, with a picture of Elizabeth on his desk while Anna tried to comfort him.

"Father? Father? It's OK, Father…Mother? Father's crying…"

"Booker…"

Alicia strode over and patted Booker on the back.

"I miss her, Alicia. I miss her every single goddamn day…if I find that Irish monster who beat her to death…I'll…I'll…"

As Booker broke into more sobs and drunken babbling, Alicia helped him up.

"Come with us. It's time we got you out of this mess."

**Rapture, 1969, Fontaine's Office **

Jack clenched his Shotgun tightly as he hid behind a shady corner and checked the door of the office.

The intel had been correct. There were no Splicers anywhere, and a pile of destroyed Security Bots lay in one corner. Meltzer's work had been done-he recognized the marks made by the Webley MK VI.

Jack was about to go when he heard someone walking.

He froze. If it was a Splicer, he'd be found. He wasn't exactly hoping for confrontation. He drew back into the shadows and held his breath, waiting.

What he saw was not a Splicer, but a beautiful young woman, dressed like a stewardess, holding a crossbow in one hand. She was, however, a ghost, and couldn't see him.

The crossbow was of interest. It had a pistol grip, and, unlike the weapons he'd seen so far, was ornately decorated in an Art Deco finish. Why hadn't Ryan told him about this?

He watched as the young woman's spirit walked over to the door of Fontaine's office and opened it with both hands.

Jack hastily ran behind her and followed her in.

The spectre checked a ghostly blueprint and looked at Fontaine's office. The model of a department store, the tower which seemed to resemble Poseidon, stood in the center. It should have been decaying, but instead it had looked as it was polished recently.

Suddenly the ghost spoke.

_"There!"_

She pointed to two corners that were in the shadows.

_"All the load bearing columns come into this room and they meet…"  
_  
Jack followed her hand.

_"…_There! _I just need to place a particle in that junction, activate…and…the whole structure should rise."  
_  
She walked towards the model of the department store, hesitating briefly. Then she shook her head.

_"Let's just get it over with."  
_  
Jack watched in awe as the woman climbed the model and stood near the main tower of the structure. She pulled out what seemed to be a jar and placed the particle in.

_"Here goes nothin'!"  
_  
She gave a small gasp of surprise. Of course, to Jack the room wasn't rising at all, but she floated into the air.

_"It's working. Atlas, do you feel that? You have your prison break! Now bring me the girl!"  
_  
She fell to the ground and looked up. It was another ghost-one of Fontaine's mooks, wearing (oddly enough) mutton chops. He looked at her.

_"Oh, great."_ groaned the woman.

Jack shuddered as her radio crackled to life and Atlas's heavily accented voice reverberated around the darkened room.

_"Did your mum never teach you to put your faith in strange, foreign men?"_

Jack noticed there were now two more ghosts in the room.

_"Just give me the girl! She means nothing to you!"  
_  
_"You got that right. The girl means nothin'. But __**you**__, love…you make the world."  
_  
Jack watched in horror as the mook with mutton chops withdrew a cloth and pressed it swiftly to her face. She grabbed his arms, weakening, then slumped to the ground.

The ghosts disappeared.

* * *

Jack stood for a while, shaken, questions buzzing through his head. Who was the girl? What had she done? What was the girl she was trying to retrieve? And why was Atlas employing her?

"Jack. Jack, are you there?"

His father's strident voice thundered over his radio.

"Yes, dad-I'm just going to get the intel now."

"Why did you delay?"

Jack told him about the ghost, what he had seen and the young woman. When he mentioned the girl's appearance, Ryan stopped the questions and started rambling instead.

"I recognize her. Elizabeth Dewitt. She was one of Cohen's disciples. There wasn't just four of them, you see-Cohen went through students like tissue paper. His disciples were excellent men. But she took Rapture by storm. One of the most beautiful and talented singers I ever saw. When she performed, she at least took a dozen curtain calls and she had hundreds of admirers. She earned a great deal of money."

"If you still want to find information about her, I can provide some. She didn't seem to go out much, and thus she had the fortune of wandering through Rapture's halls unmolested. Before she defected to Atlas's side, she visited Detective Dewitt, an excellent private eye. They were unrelated, but Cohen thought that the man was her father."

"He was found dead soon after. His body was found in Fontaine's department store. Then it disappeared from the morgue. I confronted the girl later, calling her a rube for siding with that imbecile. Afterwards, her corpse was found on the night of the New Year's Eve massacre. Atlas's men had disposed of her."

"There was a Little Sister. Who was she?"

"You know her, as a matter of fact. Her name is Sally."

The radio stopped and Jack took in everything his father had said. Elizabeth was a prominent singer, had somehow killed the detective, sided with Atlas and was later killed. And all, apparently, over Sally.

All this was linked. But why?

Jack opened the door to Fontaine's office and stuffed documents, notebooks, a letter to "Dr. Lamb" and a list of weapons for Splicers. He stuffed then into his knapsack and ran back to the Welcome Center.

**Tenenbaum's Safe House, 1969**

"Where are you going?"

Tenenbaum looked at the Luteces curiously. They had their usual coats and hats on, but they were busy loading shotguns and had ammo bandoliers slung over their shoulders, along with some obsolete German automatic pistols in hip holsters.

"We are embarking on a small trip."

"More like an outing."

"Yes, an outing would be a better term. Tenenbaum, we shall be back in an hour. In the meantime, carry on with your work."

Tenenbaum went back to her lab, shaking her head. The twins left the safe house.

**Welcome Center, 1969**

As Jack walked past a long-decayed tunnel, he saw Elizabeth's ghost again.

She walked calmly towards the window, where the ghosts of Atlas and his two associates stood, waiting. A small girl struggled in one of their arms, eyes white and wide with terror.

Sally.

He watched as he heard the sound of explosions, and realized that the event he was seeing was the start of the Civil War.

"_D'ya have it?" _Atlas asked.

"_I have it."_

"_Give it over then. I'm keen to get this brat off me hands."_

"_You know what? Andrew Ryan said I was a rube. But he was wrong. I'm not the rube, Atlas. You are."_

A flicker of anger passed through Atlas's face as he took the slip of paper from her.

"_Now, we both know what happens next. Just get it over with."_

Atlas took a wrench from one of his cronies' hands._ "Well, love...if you insist."_

And he brought it down hard on her skull with a loud _crack_.

He read through the paper as he beat her. His eyes widened in rage.

"_What is this? It's just a bunch of gibberish!"__  
_  
The woman bled out on the floor. Sally watched in horror.

"_What does this _say_, you little whore?"_ he roared.

She was drifting in and out of consciousness.

"_Hey—hey!"_ Atlas grabbed her by the back of her head, wrenching her face up. She looked at him, unrecognizable through the blood coating her face.

"_What does this say?"_

She struggled to speak through the blood pooling in her mouth. A few of her teeth were missing.

_"It says…Would You Kindly."_

Jack's lungs grew cold, constricting.

The trigger.

Atlas smiled triumphantly.

"_We got the activation phrase. Now we all to do is get that genetic freak of nature aboard an airplane, and Rapture's ours!_"

For ten agonizing minutes, Jack watched as Elizabeth slowly bled to death, unconscious. Then he noticed a ghostly little sister walk towards her and sing an unfamiliar song.

"Sally!"

Jack cursed himself when he realized he'd just yelled at a ghost out loud. Luckily, there was no one to view his faux pas.

Elizabeth looked up, blood pooling from her head. She smiled and stroked Sally's face.

Then her eyes went blank, and her head drooped. Sally bowed her own head, wordless.

Jack stood there, trembling with shock as the ghosts disappeared.

He sat down and crouched on the ground, still shaking.

Elizabeth had risked her life in order to give Atlas the code. Atlas beat her to death with a wrench, eerily similar to he was now holding. She had gone through hell in order to get a piece of paper with a code. And by delivering it to Atlas, she had inadvertently sealed his own fate.

_Son, you were special. You were born to do great things._

Jack stood up. He was going to tell his father and Tenenbaum everything.

He looked once more at his wrench, and blinked.

It was dripping with blood.

The blood flowed onto the floor and slowly a word began to take form.

ELIZABETH.

Jack yelled and swiped at the floor with his shoe, causing the letters to disappear.

He stared at his wrench. The wrench that defeated Atlas was now the wrench of a murderer.

He threw it with all his might into a dark corner and bolted off towards their safe house.

**Rapture, 1959, the first day of the Civil War  
**  
The Luteces ducked behind a barricade full of corpses as a skyscraper exploded several times and fell over in a great crash of glass and steel, the screams of the people inside it resonating through the blood-covered street, the sounds mixed with the roars of various Big Daddies and the squeals of Little Sisters.

Around then, gunfire blazed everywhere, from balconies, windows, rooftops, barricades and piles of rubble. Plasmids streaked through the air, catching whatever unlucky soul was in the way. A splicer was drilled in the face while Ion Lasers and Rivet Guns blazed away at a group of Spider Splicers. Blood flowed through the cobblestones and corpses littered the burnt ground.

"Interesting."

"What is it, my dear brother?"

"This is a near-exact parallel of the Columbia Civil War."

"What evidence do you have to support your hypothesis?"

"Well, the man attacking from the window is on Atlas's side, and he has a submachine gun, more specifically, the type that Jack often wields. The Vox member who fired on the founder held a Repeater."

"And how about the woman and her Crossbow on the balcony?"

"A Founder was sniping Voxes with a rifle."

"I do believe we have seen this street before."

"A main street in Emporia."

"This is Olympus Heights, which may explain the terrified citizens carrying jewels and dashing to the Welcome Center."

"Exactly what happened when the barges started to leave. But shall we get back onto our task?"

"Elizabeth's corpse will be outlined in chalk and have a message written by Sally. It will be near the Welcome Center, according to our notes."

Making their way through the tunnel, they picked up Elizabeth's body from the chalk outline and walked calmly, through the screams and carnage, to Suchong's tear machine, still clean and gleaming.

Looking back to see no one was watching, they carried her body into the tear. Once they were done, they switched off the machine-now weathered with age-and carried the corpse back to the safe house.

"Who is this?" asked the German scientist, as she carefully cut off a Toasty Splicer's facial disfigurements.

"This is a friend."

"Her corpse is quite fresh."

"She was in the fisheries when we found her."

"Oh."

Brigid went back to reconstructing the man's face as the Luteces walked to the nearest Vita Chamber and put Elizabeth in.

* * *

Lights.

Was she still in Heaven?

Elizabeth didn't know. All she remembered that she was in Paris, sipping coffee, feeding the pigeons, when an angel came down and told her that she was needed back on Earth.

She didn't want to leave, but she remembered Booker's suffering. Her father was a drunk again, and he needed help before his mind broke.

So she accepted. The angels had carried her back down into her body and now she was here.

"She is awake now."

Elizabeth Dewitt opened her eyes to find herself on a hospital bed, with the Luteces staring down on her.

And they looked quite angry.

"What—why...why did you bring me back?"

"We told you." said Rosalind shortly.

"And yet you did not listen to us." replied Robert.

Elizabeth stared at them in panic, in anguish. She stared down at herself. Unblemished, unburnt.

"What did I do wrong?"

"We advised you several times not to go through with it."

One word hit Elizabeth's mind like a freight train.

Booker.

She was torturing him, as the now former detective was flung screaming into the tear to Columbia, bleeding and missing his legs and an arm, from the tear cuts she had given him, after she had brought him back to life and thrown him around with Bucking Bronco.

"Please, child-DON'T DO THIS TO ME!"

And she laughed as he struggled to hold on to the edge of the closing tear with his remaining arm, and his roar of pain as his fingers were sliced into bits and her satisfaction in the knowledge that her revenge was done.

"I thought it was the right thing to do."

"Clearly, it was not. Come with us now."

Elizabeth rose from the bed, tested that all her limbs were working properly and her head was free of wrench wounds, and followed the Luteces.

They arrived at Suchong's lab. The doctor's body was still on the table, drill fixed in place. Elizabeth smiled as she remembered how the heartless doctor had met his death, and how the Big Daddy had bonded with Masha and her friend.

The Luteces dramatically threw the curtain off a machine.

Elizabeth gasped. It was Suchong's tear machine, but with extra odds and ends attached to it, which looked like they were from Columbia.

"Now come take a look."

Elizabeth cautiously approached the tear. From what she could see, it was Columbia…but a Columbia in flames. The buildings were burnt and smoke rose from the rubble.

She spread her arms and the tear opened to reveal a vast army, standing in front of a balcony.

She could recognize the different ranks of the Founders from the book Comstock had lent her, but they were now dressed in what seemed to be suits of steel armour, with two big slits for eyes and a breastplate with Comstock's face on it. They were using a mix of Vox weapons (which had been repainted in the style of the Founders) and their own-they seemed to have adopted the Broadsider as their main sidearm. Many of the normal infantry soldiers wielded Burstguns and the officers carried Triple R submachine guns. Some had Barnstormers or sniper rifles.

There were plenty of Heavy Hitters as well. The Crows wore their robes and some light armour, with swords and a Broadsider hanging on their belts. The lower ranking members carried Burstguns with black feathers decorating the barrel, while the Elite members had Triple Rs covered in fancy engravings. The Handymen now had glass domes around their head and Peppermill Crank Guns replaced their left or right arm, but the Motorized Patriots remained unchanged. The Firemen gripped a Heater shotgun in their hands and the Beasts had their signature Pig Flak guns.

Finally, a man dressed in a Confederate army uniform, with a growing white beard and gripping a Hand Cannon, stepped onto the balcony to the cheers of his army.

Elizabeth stared, wide eyed, as she realized that it was the Comstock that she had hurled into Columbia. He had mechanical legs and a clockwork-powered arm. But worst of all was the insane look in his eye.

"Soldiers, today was a terrible day. The Vox burnt and destroyed our city, but we have taken our revenge and risen from the ashes. The Lord shines upon us, and we must do our duty for Him. We have purged the Vox-"

Comstock gestured to the thousands of Vox members hanging from flagpoles and makeshift gallows.

"-but it is not over yet. The Lamb, that I nourished and fed, has turned out to be a traitor and helped the False Shepherd. We shall find her and kill her, and destroy wherever she is in! AND THEN WE SHALL ANNIHILATE THE SODOM BELOW!"

As the army let out a roar of bloodthirst, Elizabeth snapped the tear shut.

"…I should have listened to you in the first place."

"Now you understand the full extent of what you have caused. We only have two weeks to stop his army razing the city."

"Of course, sister, he will be busy repairing Columbia first. I believe he plans to use it as a mobile gunship."

"Like Laputa, but with greater weaponry. And then, once Rapture is taken, he will then annihilate the world. Despite their technology at this time, their armies will be left bleeding in rubble."

"Now depart to your chambers and rest. You will find your weapons on a table."

"She will need them very soon, dear brother."

The twins silently departed while Elizabeth went back to her bed.

Beside her bed was a glass of water and some food, along with a small pile of books. There was also a Vox Repeater with an art deco finish, and her Crossbow, along with bolts and two crates of .45 ACP ammunition.

Elizabeth sipped her water, ate her meal and read the first book on the pile, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.

She was barely into the fourth chapter when she heard a crackling sound and the smell of ozone.

Quickly she put the book down and ducked as a bolt of lightning hit the wall behind her, leaving a jagged burn mark.

Cracks started to appear in the door. Elizabeth loaded her Repeater and aimed it as Splicers burst into the room…


	2. Chapter 2

Jack heard the disturbance before he recognized it. The empty walls magnified the sounds, harsh and chaotic. A turret's sing-song tooting, followed swiftly by gunfire, and screaming. Splicers? He frowned, looked back at Eleanor. She'd heard it too. At least, he assumed as such. He couldn't see her face through the helmet.

Jack found himself wishing Delta was still here. But Delta had taken the girls back to the surface, as per his request. The image of a monster in a diving suit, spattered with blood, leading a group of chattering girls out onto dry land, oblivious to the astonishment of some unsuspecting fisherman or tourists, was fairly entertaining. He'd be back, Eleanor had reassured Jack, but she did not know when that would be.

The two of them moved quietly down the gloomy corridor. Jack was still thinking things over. They'd been finding a lot of bullet-ridden Splicers and not once had the need to open fire.

They stopped as they stumbled upon the carnage resting just beyond the end. Corpses littered the floor, blood leaking from where they had been shot. The walls and floor of the tiny sub-room were coated with ice, scorched with burn marks. The smell of ozone and burnt flesh hung in the air.

"Look," said Eleanor. "All this refuse—it's from their own weapons. They killed one another."

There was a meticulousness to their dispatchment. Clearly, someone—or something—had torn through their way through more than a few of them.

What kind of Splicer would do this?

His thoughts were interrupted by more gunfire. It came in short bursts, then silence resumed.

Now, laughter, distant and warped by the wet, grimy halls: "That's cute, real cute! You think I wouldn't notice if you just waltzed in here? Huh?"

Jack spun around, wrench in hand. There were no Splicers to be seen.

"Fuck." A voice, reedy, joined the first. Jack stopped, arm out, and glanced at Eleanor. She stared back at him. The voice spoke up again: "Huh? I mean—shhh, someone's there."

The death scream was cut short by another burst of gunfire.

* * *

_Dewitt Detective Agency, 1913._

"I think you'll find that we can be very patient, Mister DeWitt," said Robert Lutece.

"But we are busy people," Rosalind added. "And we won't wait around forever for your decision."

Booker kept his head down, buried it further in his arms like a frightened child, still refusing to say anything.

"It's a very simple process, to get her back." added Robert, as he placed a hand on the detective's shoulder.

* * *

Jack watched as a woman stepped out of the shadows and kicked the corpse aside, an unfamiliar submachine gun in hand.

"Who are you?" the woman demanded.

Jack raised a hand in preparation to fire. "I could ask you the same thing."


End file.
